246 been committed in the temple. Nor was John of Gischala “slain by the breath of Christ’s mouth.” Instead, John was taken to Rome where he was paraded through the streets of Rome during the Triumph, and then kept in Roman prison until he died several years later. Very few of the statements in 2 Thess. 2 can be applied to John. Furthermore, Simon b. Giora, another of the three main Zealot leaders, was dragged through the streets of Rome and thrown over the cliff in sacrifice to the Roman gods right after the Triumph of Vespasian and Titus. Simon never had control of the temple, so it is impossible to see him as the one who “sat in the temple of God” (2 Thess. 2:4). Of the three original Zealot leaders, only Eleazar b. Ananias is unaccounted for. Josephus drops all mention of him after the war council in Jerusalem in AD 66, but both Yosippon and Hegesippus state that he stayed in Jerusalem and maintained control of the temple throughout the war, until just before the siege of Titus (mid-70). When John of Gischala broke into the temple with his soldiers and gained control of it (Spring or Summer of AD 70), evidently Eleazar took his family and got out of the city through some of the underground tunnels, and then fled to Masada, where he held out until AD 73. It is interesting that Josephus mentions the fact that the defenders of Masada, including Eleazar himself, were slain by the hand of their own fellow Zealots in a mass suicide pact. Then their bodies were thrown into the blazing fire and burned to ashes there on top of Masada. We will say much more about all that when we get to that part of the history in AD 73. When viewed through the historical lens of Josephus, Yosippon, and Hegesippus, Eleazar b. Ananias does have a lot of connections with the Man of Lawlessness, as he is described in 2 Thess. 2:3-9. If he is the Man of Lawlessness, then the one who restrained him was his own father (Ananias b. Nedebaeus) who held a tight rein on him until AD 66 when Menahem killed Ananias. Eleazar was then freed from restraint, and immediately began to manifest his LAWLESS nature. Apr 66 – Abomination of Desolation (“Jerusalem encompassed by armies”)
[Matt. 24:15; Mark 13:14; Lk. 21:20] Somewhere in this timeframe (Spring of AD 66) just before the war began, we would have to place the Abomination of Desolation. Both Matthew and Mark in their accounts of the Olivet Discourse (the Synoptic Apocalypse) say that the Abomination would stand in a holy place where it should not be. Luke was definitely aware of both those accounts when he composed his gospel, and it is clear that he understood the Abomination to be armies or army encampments in the area around Jerusalem. We noted above the movements and actions of Florus’ troops in his attempt to seize all the gold in the temple and force the Jews to bring coins into the temple with Caesar’s deified image on them. This was viewed by the people of Jerusalem as an attack on their religion (not just on their pocketbook). They would not sit idly by and let Florus get away with this. This phrase (“abomination of desolation”) would immediately arouse the interest of Jewish people because they believed that at the end of the age an evil man of lawlessness (cf. 2 Thess. 2) would do something abominable like Antiochus did. The word abomination is referring to an abominable person or thing which would defile the temple or Jerusalem and cause it to be desolated and destroyed. The word abomination had strong connections with idols and pagan sacrifices to idols, or anything unclean which pollutes the temple and the city of Jerusalem. Something utterly abhorrent like this would happen to force the Jews to go to war, just like they did in the days of Antiochus. As Antiochus tried to Hellenize the Jews and change their religion to pagan idolatry, so the Romans tried to paganize the Jews and force idolatry and emperor worship upon them. The approach of Florus’ Roman troops toward Jerusalem could easily have been understood by the Jewish people as a signal to flee. (Matt. 24:15-20; Mark 13:14; Luke 21:20) It was the first time since the days of Caligula (AD 39-41) that a Roman commander had brought that many soldiers (three cohorts) to Jerusalem with such a hostile intent (to rob them of their imageless coinage, and force them to use coins with Caesar’s image on them). Plus, there were Zealot armies forming at this very time who came to Jerusalem shortly after this with their armies to take over the leadership of the war effort. So there were several armies encircling Jerusalem
